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Heath, Mass.-On Pocumtuck Road

(c) Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association, Deerfield MA. All rights reserved.
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This postcard image was intended to bring "local color" to an urban audience that had begun to see all rural life as backward and antique. On the opposite side, the correspondent had written that his "luck don't seem to turn much for the better," hinting that this ramshackle hovel was a symbol of his bad fortune. This was precisely the image that the town histories of rural communities such as Heath sought to overcome, and this was one vision of New England prevalent before the highly successful early 20th century effort to present New England as America's "true" heartland, an effort best exemplified by the creation and promotion of Old Deerfield, Massachusetts.

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